Three themes in particular emerge from this year’s selection of significant European Union (EU) environmental cases. First, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has emphasised the need for ‘effective’ remedies in a wide variety of environmental contexts. [---] Secondly, the CJEU has relied on an underlying legislative objective of ‘environmental protection’ when construing EU environmental law, and has elaborated detailed legal requirements by reference to that broad objective. Thirdly, however, the CJEU has not been entirely consistent. In a number of notable instances, it has made decisions that deny effective redress and undermine environmental protection.